diplopia
by naggingGargoyle
Summary: There's this pearl of Blue Diamond's. Every time you see her, you see her a little differently. (In which it takes Yellow Pearl seven tries to fall in love.)
1. Chapter 1

**Warning** for some ableist language & attitudes, mild violence, implied abuse, homeworld awfulness, internalized homeworld awfulness.

* * *

The first time you see her is in official capacity, while you're still very new, and you think she seems lethargic and inefficient. The hair, for one thing. Why would she obstruct her own vision in this way. As pearls, you are already at a disadvantage. Then there is the way she moves: stilted, awkward motions, as if constantly choosing a direction and immediately losing her nerve.

It annoys you. Doesn't she know that if she doesn't push hard, nobody will make room for her. If she isn't certain and clear, nothing will be easy and understandable. Does she take her position at Blue Diamond's side for granted. What is she doing there anyway.

The first time you see her you don't speak at all, not to her or really anyone else. Your job is to stand by and look official and intimidating and like you could really file some paperwork at any moment, so quickly and accurately it'd knock Blue Diamond's hood right off.

So you want to tell her everything she's doing wrong, that first time that you see her, but you're not there to talk, so you don't. You decide to communicate via body language, and pointedly draw your shoulders back and shoot her disapproving looks throughout. But there is her inadvisable hair, and her inexcusable posture, and that intolerable aborted fidgeting, and you have no idea if she can see you, or understand you if she does.

The first time you see her, you immediately resent and dislike her, and you're glad your Diamonds have little to do with each other's purviews, and you are unlikely to have to work with her again.

 _("The first time I saw you,"_ she'll tell you much later, _"I thought you seemed really cool.")_

.

You are mostly right, and your trajectories don't intersect for many cycles. By the second time you see her, you've almost forgotten her; you've been growing and doing and accomplishing a lot, and you haven't had time or reason to think about her too much. But you see her and her hair and her awful coordination, and you're immediately reminded.

The second time you see her, you are on a visit with your Diamond to some new colony; a nuisance, but diplomatically necessary, your Diamond concedes. You don't have much to do there, yourself, but as Blue Diamond's pearl, you assume she must have been granted some measure of responsibility. When you see her, however, she's fidgeting with a simple recording cube, seemingly unable to get it to erase a segment of useless white noise.

"Give me that," you snap. Batting away her hands is amazingly easy. You erase the sequence in seconds. "Here. I just saved you some getting yelled at."

She just stands there, facing you. Not even a thank you, and impossible to tell the kind of expression she's wearing.

You sigh, shake your head. "Tell me the truth, how did you end up Blue Diamond's? Last minute placeholder? Got cracked in the line of duty and she felt too bad to replace you?"

"No," she says quietly, voice as wishy-washy and uncertain as her movements. "I was made to her exact specifications."

"Hm. Bet everyone who'd worked on you got reassigned when they saw how you turned out."

"I don't think they were," she murmurs. You have to lean forward to hear her comfortably.

"You are too quiet," you admonish. "It's more of a nuisance if everyone needs to strain to understand you, you know."

"I disagree," she mumbles.

"What was that? Your diction is terrible."

"I disagree!" she says. Her voice is loud and clear and ringing, and she looks up, right at you, and her hair slides away from her face. One of her eyes is clearly focused in a different direction.

For a moment, you're too taken aback to respond. And then she's speaking again.

"I don't think you know a lot about my circumstances." She's quiet and mumbly again, but you understand perfectly. "You should do what you need to do. Maybe I need to do different things."

You don't say another word for the duration of the visit. You feel unwontedly chastised. You try your best to represent your Diamond proudly, but you get distracted, watching for her, though you don't catch sight of her again.

Your Diamond isn't very happy with you. You feel the same way.

.

 _("I thought things must not have been easy for you. But you were very hard to sympathize with."_

 _"Ugh. I really wasted that first impression, didn't I? I should've just kept making faces at you. Then I'd have been the handsome, mysterious, cooler pearl forever."_

She'll laugh, and turn her face toward you, and you will love her a lot. _"I think we both know there was never a chance of that happening.")_

.

You don't talk to her again for a long time. The third and fourth and fifth times you see her, it's from a distance, in passing, on the way to the next thing. Outside the war room on the rare occasion of a multi-Diamond conference; through the window of a ship bound to an old, badly behaved base; in the hallway of the completed headquarters at the hot new white dwarf colony.

Once, you see her get her shoulder grabbed by a fluorite, and you have the inexplicable urge to run over there and push her off. But of course you don't, and she performs a halting, stop-start little maneuver and gets under and away from the hand anyway. It was not smooth or polite at all, but it got the job done, you guess.

And you have your work to do.

.

 _("I didn't notice you looking,"_ she'll say, but she'll be smiling. _"Dunce.")_

.

You hear things about her.

("She's been to a lot of places," the aquamarine at the hydroponics hub tells her. "Can't get her to talk about it, though. Smart pearl."

"She might have a psychic link with Blue Diamond," whispers some-general-or-other's pearl. "Nobody ever sees them talk to each other, but I've heard she always just knows exactly what Blue Diamond wants. Don't tell her I said that."

"She's nontraditional, but Blue Diamond likes that," says the cranky old obsidian at the archives. "She's certainly lasted longer than the rest of them."

You shudder at that one. It's not the done thing to talk about previous occupants.)

She's a pearl, so you know to ignore half the condemnations. And she's a Diamond's, so you know to ignore half the commendations.

In the end, you're left with this: she's odd and quiet, obviously, and she's good with numbers, and she might know some things that nobody's supposed to know.

.

 _("'Things nobody is supposed to know', ooh,"_ she'll repeat after you. _"So actually, I've been the cool and mysterious one all along."_

 _"Fine. I'll take just 'handsome'.")_

.

The sixth time you see her, you're very tired and very annoyed with your tiredness, and you need her help. You can't disappoint your Diamond again. Can't can't can't.

The sixth time you see her, you're back home, and she's visiting with Blue Diamond. You've been sneaking looks at some files for a while, unauthorized, trying to be more useful, trying to feel more important, trying to do _something_ , you don't even know anymore. But now you have a ruined star chart pressed snug against your back under your uniform, and things have not been going well even without this new mess, and then you see her and you think, for some ridiculous reason, that she might understand.

You catch up to her, matching her stride. "Hello again," you say briskly, businesslike to hide you agitation. "We've been assigned to recreate a damaged chart. You been apprised?"

She jumps, and turns to face you. "No," she says, and her hand twitches strangely.

You grimace. She looks almost scared. "That was a lie. I need help."

"Oh." She shakes out her hand. "Okay."

"Don't agree so easily!" you scold her. "Don't you have a million and one errands to run? You haven't even heard my apology yet."

"Okay." She turns her face up at you expectantly.

You take a breath, draw yourself up. You feel like you're buzzing. Your head's a bit light. "I'm sorry. I was wrong. You were right," you say. "Will you help?"

She stands still for a moment. You regret every word you've ever vocalized. "Yes," she says, as softly and clumsily as ever, but somehow you still feel like you're being made fun of. "Good apology."

You take her to one of the newer, less frequented workrooms, show her the map. You know she's traveled to countless stars. You know she knows a lot about them. You can fix the mechanism; you just need her help recreating the information.

She closes her eyes and projects a schematic for you, and you thank her very stiffly and very sincerely and finally breathe.

"Do you really think she'd approve of you doing this by yourself?" she asks after you've been working a while. Her voice is as soft as always, but you still startle.

You shrug. "She's strict, but fair. She appreciates initiative."

You know you're lying. You know she wouldn't appreciate this, wouldn't even pause to find out the hows and whys. You know who you are, and where your pride's best placed, and where it isn't welcome. But you're tired and hurt and a little desperate, and it's all fine as long as you don't get caught.

It's a good thing you're almost done. You just need to attach the memory chip and put the box back together.

"Um. Hand me those pliers," you ask her.

You hold out your hand, still focused on the box. You don't feel the weight of the pliers in your palm. Instead, there's a loud clunk.

You look around. She's picking up the dropped pliers. "I guess I misjudged the distance," she mutters.

You reach over and take them from her. "So… Blue Diamond really did that to you on purpose?" you ask, hesitant.

"Not ' _that_ '," she corrects. She sounds calm enough. "You mean me. She made _me_ on purpose."

You frown. "No, I mean that," you repeat, waving your hand in the general direction of her face.

"Yes," she says, voice soft and level and a little bit chilling. "Me."

You blink. "Oh." You finally understand what she's saying. You feel like the worst kind of gem. "Sorry. Again."

"Forgiven. Again." She turns toward you. "But next apology you'll need a more impressive vocabulary."

You give a startled laugh, feeling much braver. She's joking at your expense, and you like it a lot. You lean in closer. "So… does she ever do anything embarrassing when she forgets you're in the room?"

She smiles a little bit. You feel like every mistake you've ever made leading up to this moment has been validated. "She laughs to herself, sometimes," she tells you quietly. "Like this," she says, and demonstrates. It is indeed embarrassing.

You want to tell her about the way your Diamond bunches up her robe to scratch her butt, but you absolutely cannot bring yourself to say it. You ask about some of the rumors you've heard about her instead, so your sudden bravery doesn't go completely to waste. "Is it true you've been to a planet made of… _diamond_?" You whisper the last part. It feels blasphemous. It _is_ blasphemous. But she isn't shocked at all.

She flutters a hand. "It's a big lump of compressed carbon," she says, indifferent. "Some… some gems are just a bit egotistical."

You blink. What an incredibly dangerous thing to say. "What are you saying?"

"Nothing," she mutters, and you know you're not imagining the resentment in her voice. You don't need to strain to understand her anymore. "What _could_ I be saying."

"I don't know," you reply, accidentally hushed. "Something."

She looks at you. You think she does. She tilts her head up. You wait, and she is silent.

"Some planets have people on them," she murmurs.

"Yeah?"

Her fingers twitch. Jerky, repetitive. "Some people have interesting… opinions. And cultures, and. Things."

"How do you know? There's no way they'd let you do field work."

"I hear some things. I'm good at that."

You stare at her, a bit awed, a bit scared. Then you smirk. "I knew you were secretly a gossip."

She lets out a gust of breath all at once. You're pretty sure that was a kind of laugh.

You mean to say something else, try to make her laugh some more, but you're interrupted by the beep of the outer door opening.

"Who's in here? This is a restricted area!"

An aragonite. Her blue tint and flowing gown identify her as a member of Blue Diamond's court; she has essentially no jurisdiction over you. At most she could file a complaint that you will be the one tasked with processing. But you are not in this alone.

You tuck the chart back underneath your uniform and look around. There are the old emergency footholds floating in the air, probably leading into one of the automated control rooms above. You use the notches in the wall to climb and jump onto the first one, throwing out your arms for one terrifying second when you land before regaining balance.

"Come on," you urge in a loud whisper, crouching down and extending your arm out to help her up. You look at her expectantly. She doesn't move. "What are you doing? Hurry up!"

She shakes her head. "I have problems with balance. My depth perception –"

"You! This is very delicate machinery! Pearls aren't allowed in here!" the aragonite calls. She takes several long steps and grabs your pearl's arm. "Just what I needed today," she grumbles. "Come along."

"Hey! Get off her, you leave her alone!" you shout at her. "It was _my_ fault! _Hey_!" She ignores you, leading your pearl to the door.

You jump off the step, landing with an annoyingly jarring thud. Scramble to your feet, grit your teeth and go after them.

The aragonite is large but spindly, and you're sure your pearl ( _not yours_ ) could break her hold with some wriggling. But she goes stiff and quiet, not even a twitch, none of the constant, disjointed movements you now realize you've gotten used to. It unnerves you. It makes you really, really mad.

You make a strange, angry noise as you push your way between them, trying to pry away the aragonite's grip; she shoves you, square in the chest, and you fall on your ass. You push out your legs, trying to trip her, but she avoids you easily. You roll to a crouch and slam your shoulder into the backs of her knees. She stumbles.

"What exactly is happening here."

Her voice cuts through the petty noises of your insignificant struggle. Her voice. Half your thoughts are in that voice.

You snap up straight. Your midsection protests. She towers above you, like always, radiating power and disapproval. You don't dare look up at her face. "An error in judgment has been made, my Diamond," you say promptly. You sound rigid and detached. Good. "I was trying to prevent a misapplication of resources."

Your Diamond waves her hand. _Shut up._ "You," she says dismissively to the aragonite, "let her go. You," she continues, not looking at you, but you know. "Come with me."

The aragonite releases her grip and folds her hands behind her back. She seems to be holding her breath. Once again, you are grateful for your Diamond's reputation. Grateful, but also. Hers isn't the only breath that catches.

The blue pearl takes a half step back, but nothing more than that. She's facing toward you. You don't know if she's looking at you, with that hair. She could be looking at the ground. Could be looking at your Diamond.

Without quite making a conscious decision to do it, you stop, and smirk, and wink at her. And turn back to follow your Diamond to your certain doom.

.

 _("I was looking,"_ she'll tell you, smiling unhappily. _"Of course I was looking. And making very inadvisable plans."_

 _"What kind?"_

 _"What kind, she asks."_ She'll shake her head. _"The kind we have already inadvisably executed, obviously.")_

.

You don't get reassigned. Neither in the literal nor the euphemistic sense.

"I don't want to destroy you," your Diamond tells you. "You have your uses."

You're stuck in a disorienting blend of elation and terror for quite a while after that. And you don't see the blue pearl again for a very, very long time.

.

The seventh time you see her, in one of the empty side chambers near the room where a summit 's taking place, after you've spent too long silent and alone, you call her and your voice cracks and at first she doesn't hear you.

"Hey! You… Pearl! Hey!"

And then she does.

You can tell the exact moment she hears you, because every part of her freezes. Then she turns around, walks toward you, one arm extended. Her hand bumps your shoulder and she stops.

"Uh. Hi," you say.

She tilts her head up, and her fringe slips and parts. For only the second time, you can see her eyes. One of them is fixed somewhere on your face, below your own eyes. You swallow, unaccountably nervous. And then she hugs you.

She's close and soft and her hold is very firm. You can feel the flat side of her fist pressed into the middle of your back, and it's strangely reassuring. You rest your cheek on top of her messy hair for a moment.

She lets you go. "You can call me Blue," she says.

You're grinning a bit extravagantly, you think. But it's completely fine. She's smiling too.

"So… I didn't get nixed," you tell her.

She chuckles. "I know. I heard my… I heard Blue Diamond complaining about _'that annoying, gaudy little pearl of Yellow's_.'"

You snort very loudly. "Blue Diamond called me _gaudy_?"

"Don't forget annoying," Blue happily supplies.

You laugh some more. "That's great. I love it," you say.

"I love you," she replies.

You choke on a giggle. "What?"

She shakes her head, shakes her hands. "I mean. I hate… everything. This place. But I think I love you. Do you think that's alright?"

"I –" You swallow. Glance from her hands to her mouth to her hair, hiding her eyes once again. She's beautiful and strange and brilliant and she's associated with scary and persistent things in your mind, so that every time you think about her there's almost this ringing in your head. "Uh. Well," you say. You look away. Straighten up. Look back. "Might be."

You reach out, touch her hand. Close your fingers around it. Loose and pliant. Her hand is steady in yours; she turns it over, squeezes.

"So, um." Blue plays with your fingers, nervous and tender. She brushes her other hand over her chest. Her gem blinks for a moment, then projects a round, bluish image onto the nearest wall. "Let me tell you about this one planet I found."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary:** Every time you kiss her, you feel – well, pretty much the same. And you never want to stop.

 **Note:** Short fluffy addendum, because they did not kiss in the previous chapter, and I regret that.

* * *

You kiss her for the first time beneath the palm of a dysfunctional ship, and it's not exactly remarkable, and not exactly on purpose.

It starts like this: first, she hugs you again, and you grip one hand at her opposite hip, press the other under her shoulder blade, asymmetrical and ridiculously comfortable. Then you nose up her throat, acting on inexplicable instinct, until you bump the underside of her jaw. She makes a noise and you draw back, squinting at her, immediately contrite. But she laughs, that breathy, half-silent sound that is your life's mission to elicit, and she holds the back of your neck and your eyes close of their own accord.

Her lips are dry and cracked, and they chafe slightly against yours. You lean helplessly in; you could be kissing sandpaper, and if that sandpaper was her, you'd be happy. You move your mouth, you stay still, you swallow unnecessarily, you dip your fingers in her hair. You don't know what to do, but everything you do, you like.

Blue makes another noise. You're less worried now, but you still stop. She doesn't laugh this time; just gives a frustrated huff and pulls you back in.

You never thought you'd like this. You never thought you'd try this. But you do, you are, and maybe, probably, she does too, and you've never felt so uncertain and so safe.

She stops kissing you and huffs-laughs again, and you love her.

"So this, um, this isn't something we're supposed to do," you mumble, numb and buzzing simultaneously.

"No," she agrees, and leans forward again.

She tastes like clarity (finally).

.

You don't get to kiss her again for many cycles. She's off to some half dead sun doing important work for the betterment of the empire ( _y_ _ou pitched your voice like Blue Diamond's and she snorted and shook her head)_ , and you are still in your excruciatingly monotonous probationary period.

You're painstakingly proper and prompt and courteous, observing all the most tedious niceties, following directions to the letter, politely averting your eyes in ways you've never done before; an exemplary pearl.

And in your every solitary moment, you think about Blue's lips, and about ways to make surplus emergency spacecraft smoothly disappear from the records.

.

The fifteenth time you kiss her, there's an alien type of weed beneath your feet, and everything underneath and around you is very very green.

"One sun," you comment, squinting up at it, distractedly rubbing your toes into the ground. Stiff, scratchy leaves give way to reveal soft, crumbly brown earth. "Modest, but workable."

"Without interference, it would probably last a few billion more Earth cycles," Blue tells you quietly.

"Is that the kind of lifespan these creatures have?" you ask, running your hands over the coarse, intricate outer shell of a tree.

She shakes her head. "Less than a millionth of that, usually, I think."

"So young," you murmur, stroking the shell until your palms tingle, giving it a push and feeling no give. "They seem so sure of themself."

You turn around, your side grazing against the brittle ridges of the tree, their fascinating texture imprinting onto the skin of your shoulders and upper back. Blue presses close, fixing you between them. You hope they don't mind.

She kisses you, and all you can smell is the strange nitrogen-rich Earth air, and the mild, salty scent of her hair; all you can feel are the unfamiliar edges of the weeds and the clingy warmth of the earth and the complex curvature of the tree, and the soft dry changeable shape of her lips and the jittery pressure of her fingers and the firm comforting nearness of her body; and all you can think is that all this is so new, and exactly as it should be.

.

The six thousandth time you kiss her – nah, you're just bluffing. You've lost count a long while ago. Actually, you've never really counted. It's a waste of time. Time that could be spent doing something more interesting. Like kissing Blue.

Anyway, the such-and-such time you kiss her, her lips are still chapped, and your head is still cottony, and the world around you is still very green, and you still love her, like constellations and mountains and your own erratic, glittering core.

You're a bit okay with this permanence.

.

( _"I love you,"_ she tells you, now, and later, and after that. _"Even though you're not very cool or mysterious."_

 _"That's kind of backhanded,"_ you reply, sometimes. Other times, you just kiss her, instead.)


End file.
